Born of Fire
by Rachel's Not Dead
Summary: Marco has a plan. Rachel has a debt. Jake has a gaggle of starstruck fans and Cassie has a boyfriend. And Tobias--he has a bird's eye view.
1. Killing Time

I was killing time. That was the sad, sad truth: I had nothing to do, I didn't want to go outside and face the paparazzi, and I was bored. So I did what I had been doing more and more often lately: I logged onto my computer account, went straight to Google, and typed in the word that defined my life: "Animorph."

A million results pulled up. Several scores of pointless headlines squandered the first few pages, and then I happened across something that seemed a bit more interesting.

"The Animorphs: Forgotten Days" was the blaring headline, and I clicked it. What were they saying about me now?  
When the page was fully loaded, I stared in raw shock at what was before me. Little T's were intertwined with R's; and there were, most prominently, J's and C's intertwined together, splashed across the page.

I gasped in a breath, collected my willpower, and began to read.

"Poor Jake!" The article began.

_According to reports from anonymous reliable sources, Jake Berensen proposed to Cassie Gardener several weeks before the final battle of the Animorphiean War. She accepted; but now, years after the war's sad conclusion, we onlookers see a Jake that is struggling to cope with the pressures of being the most famous man ever to walk the earth—and he is noteably Cassie-less. Meanwhile, we see a Cassie Gardener that seems happy enough in the arms of the man whom she is absurdly affectionate toward but repeatedly denies to be her significant other, Ron Helexson. Jake's fellow Animorph, Marco Torres, has hinted that Jake's failure to marry Cassie as he said he would was a result of Cassie's reluctance, and not the other way around. And yet, when fans have put the pair up to compadability tests, they almost unfailingly achieve a perfect score. Marital counselors have confirmed, after extensive analyzation of the pair's different personalities, that they would make a couple that was not only loving and well-matched, but that could conduct a durable relationship. Says Animorphiean expert and scholar John Mildworth, "Jake is smart. He knows that he was meant for Cassie, and she for him; but he knows, also, that proposing the subject would upset the delicate balance of the odd 'relationship' that they can barely even now maintain. He's not about to ask her to marry him." Poor Jake!_

I sat there with my fingers posed on the keyboard, in dumb shock. Of course I knew that there were Cassie/Jake fanlistings out there—of course. But this? This was a surprise.

"Hey Cass?" Ronnie came to the door, grinning at me, framed in the whitewashed doorway. "Yeah?" "Have you seen my razor?"

I looked him up and down, one eyebrow cocked, stifling a laugh. There he stood in a muscle shirt and shorts, half-shaven. It was this that I loved about Ronnie: the absolute candidness of our relationship.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

It was true, I admitted to myself.

I loved Ronnie. That was a love I could never recreate with any other man, not even Jake.

Right?


	2. The File

A/N: Here's the second chapter. If it doesn't make too much sense, just keep reading!—it will later. I love writing and I love readers—I would be sooo very grateful if you'd review. ENJOY!

I want to feel, I told her. She offered no response, but relinquished her hold on my actions—for a minute, I stood there, digging my toes into the moist soil, cherishing the feeling. Freedom is a feeling that I have always loved, now more than ever.

She made a little noise of dissatisfaction, and my mind snapped back to my mission.

I shut my eyes and focused, and featherlike patterns began to appear on my skin. The ground began to zoom up toward me at such a rapid pace that I let out a little squeal of shock. It still startled me how quickly I could change.

My fingers began sharp and hard, weapons: talons. My arms began wings. I was the osprey.

I took off from the ground, soaring up on a thermal, scanning the bleak forest ground for the hidden building that I was looking for.

I almost laughed aloud when I saw it. The man had said that it was hidden, a secret; but whoever had built it had put very little effort into its concealment. It was huge and looming, so that several Cathedrals could fit inside it. It was a metal dome, the sides of it shining in the dim daylight.

People, small, mindless servants of the law, I assumed, scurried about the place unimportantly, like a colony of confused ants. I swooped down with a shrill cry, unnoticed, and landed in a dense clutter of trees by the patch of clearing.

I demorphed. My feathers softened and changed their substance, and I grew: my wings rounded into arms and my talons into legs and feet and toes. The changes began immediately after that. I hated going bug, being a little, mindless creature that scuttled across linoleum floors—but a soldier must do what a soldier must do.

She changed too, of course. Had she remained in her natural form, she would have been crushed. Somehow, though, in a way I could never understand, they could retain their form as they shrank, become miniature versions of themselves. I didn't know how—but no matter. I had a job to do.

I scampered across the dirt of the earth, swerving this way and that to avoid their heavy footfalls. I saw a crescent of darkness of pale light that I assumed was the inside of the dome, and I darted inside, unbeknownst to anyone or anything.

The man that I ended up following had brown hair streaked with gray and a buzz cut. I crawled up his back and dug my little legs into his short hair, holding on as tightly as I could. Finally, I let go and fell backwards, the smallness of my body breaking my fall. I began to dimorph behind him, becoming myself. The stifled sounds of changing caught his attention but did not hold it for long: by the time he realized that there was someone or something behind him, it was too late. My fingers closed around his throat; he closed his eyes and he was gone.

I focused on acquiring his DNA, on making him a part of me. This was the glory of the Andalites' genius—the power to morph. I dragged him to a stuffy closet and took his place. I continued down the hall as I guessed he would have, and I turned out to be right.

I approached a doorway.

"Roger," a gray-haired man said gruffly, and I grunted my reply. I flashed the ID I had found on his person, pressed my finger to the plate the man held up, and continued walking. The doors swung open to admit me. The man wasn't finished with me. "Password?" he said coldly.

I whipped around. I ran up to him, and my fingers closed around his neck; he pressed a button on his belt. I heard the scream of a whistle. Reinforcements were coming. I mustered all my strength and hurled the man against the wall. I changed yet again, to my natural form, and then to that of the pathetic insect who had served me so well as of yet.

By the time a few dozen intimidating troops came rushing in, I was inside.

There was a small elevator. I looked at the wall. Who was I looking for? Oh yes, Andy Weller. Room A13, on the third floor.

The elevator was empty, and I demorphed as quickly as I could, but I still had too-large eyes as the doors slid open. I knew I must look odd, a barefoot redheaded girl in skintight morphing clothes in a big building full of bad-tempered officials. I darted into the office I was looking for—thankfully the first one I saw—and slammed the ajar door shut behind me.

The man sitting mutely at the desk stared up at me, the expression on his face uninterested, until he took in the sight of me. By then it was too late for him; for the third time that day, I attacked an unprepared grown man and let the consciousness slide from him.

When his skin was clammy with lifelessness, I set about my work. There were hundreds of files in his cabinet. It took me nearly an hour to find the one I sought: _Berensen, Rachel. _

I pressed the paper up against my skin as I became my osprey. It was a part of me.

My name is Gabrielle. And I am the last of the Human-Controllers.


	3. A Plan of Action

"That's it. That's just plain _it." _ I slammed the phone down on the counter, fuming. I looked at my muted TV.

Images of my friends crowded the screen. Of course—we were all over the media nowadays—but the difference between us was striking.

The look of an old man who'd lived a thousand years had not yet left Jake's eyes. Most of the shots of Cassie showed her like she was meant to be, smiling up at the camera from her position crouching in the dirt, petting a dog or a llama or something. Rachel was smiling, always smiling, even though most of the time she looked like she wanted to kill the paparazzi, and then there was me—a little vertically challenged, but attractive in a way that made girls cheer and pass out at the sight of me.

So everything was as it should be. Except for Jake.

I mean, I can understand why the guy might not be Mr. Smiley Face—he sent his cousin in to kill his brother, for goodness sake—but he never smiled. _Never _laughed. He had everything, but he always looked like he was walking back from a funeral.

But I was Marco. I was Marco the amazingly funny and painstakingly cute and astonishingly clever. I wasn't just going to sit here—I was going to do something.

Hold on, where was I? Oh yeah, the phone call.

It was Jake. He sounded so lonely, you know? Like my dad, after my mom "died." Now I've seen sobbing, I've seen shocked, I've seen all different levels of sad, but that tops it all. That's something nobody should have to endure, especially not the world's savior, Jake Berensen.

So I did what I do when I'm thinking. I played some video games, watched old Baywatch reruns, listened to my iPod with the volume up. And I had it.

"Remind me why we're here again?" Rachel demanded of the hawk doing flips in the air next to her.

Because Marco said you owe him something, Tobias replied, a teasing edge to his voice. Rachel didn't notice. "That. Oh, that."

"Yes, that," I said loudly, leaning back on a heap of hay.

"What is it now? And why are we meeting in some random barn?"

I shrugged. "For old times' sake." "Are the others on their way?"

"No." "What—" Rachel began, but Tobias cut her off. Marco… 

"Okay, here it is, our first mission independent of Cassie or Jake," I announced. "Who," I added as a sly afterthought, "happen to be the subject of today's meeting."

"What?"

"We have to get them together," I said flatly. "WHAT?! I'm not going to screw up their love lives." She crossed her arms across her chest, stubborn as always, and sat on a bale of hay.

"He's your cousin," I persisted. "Don't you see how sad he is?"

"I—"

He's right, Rach, Tobias noted quietly.

I grinned in triumph. Rachel might never do as I asked, but she would never go against the wishes of Tobias. In fact, I was about to make a crack about the power of the birdboy over Rachel, mighty warrior princess, but I decided the better of it.

So, Tobias mused, snatching me out of my glorious moment of victory, How exactly are we going to do this? 

That wiped what I'm sure was a very silly (but exceptionally cute) smile off my face. It wasn't like I didn't have a plan—of course I did—but it was a very rough draft, very reckless, could easily fall down in shambles around my ankles, and didn't-have-a-few-of-the-finer-points-worked-out plan.

Basically, we were going to fake an emergency.

"So—you're saying—that we—are going to—go on a mission—like the old days—and get Cassie and Jake—to fall in love? And—_we're—_going to be the villans—_and _the heroes—at the same time?" Rachel asked me in carefully measured tones, a failed attempted not to let her anger show. "Hell no."

"You have a better idea?"

"They could just do it the old-timey way—you know, falling in love of your own free will."

"How?"

Rachel thought for a moment, and then threw her arms up in the air, exasperated. "I don't know! But my point is that this is wrong! The only thing this plan will accomplish, Marco, is to scare the two of them out of their skins!"

Rachel, now that Marco mentions it, I don't think we have a choice. It's what's good for the both of them, especially Jake. 

"Whose side are you on?"

But I think it would be wrong— 

"Ha!"

to cause the emergency ourselves, Tobias finished calmly. Rachel shot him a sulky look. I asked the question that I knew was taking shape in her mind. "Who else would cause it?"

The Ellimist. 

Rachel and I both stared at him, open-mouthed.

"He doesn't interfere in human affairs," I pointed out. No, Tobias agreed. He meddles. I grinned. Rachel looked us over as if she were a wise old woman observing two little-boy nutcases. Then she sighed. "Fine."

"Let's do it!" I supplied, jumping to my feet in a very Rachel-like way.

Everyone laughed.


	4. Beseeching the Ellimist

"So how are we going to get the Ellimist to help us out?" Marco asked me, strolling with his hands in his pockets, crunching the dew-heavy leaves on the moist forest floor with his shoes. (How should I know?) I snapped at him, plummeting up and down in the air just to blow off steam. Truth is, I had thought of this about midnight last night and couldn't come up with a suitable solution. So I was sleep deprived and grumpy, and to make matters worse, Rachel hadn't shown up yet. Needless to say, I was majorly ticked.

Marco looked up at me with that innocent expression on his face, which did nothing to help my mood. "Ellimist?" he called into the air. "Ellimist? Come forth!"

I glared down at him—well, not like I ever _didn't _glare at anybody—but I glared down at him. He gave a little pout and I sighed loudly in his head.

(Just come on.)

"Where are we going?"

(How should I know?)

"You know, this mission was _really _well planned," Marco grumbled under his breath. If I had been human, I would have rolled my eyes. I guess you could consider Marco one of my best friends—I mean, he had saved my life a dozen times over—but he still got irritating when nobody had a plan and he had partied too late the night before.

A laugh pierced the air. (You boys sound like you're biting each other's heads off,) Rachel commented, twirling into sight, her huge bald eagle doing gymnastics gracelessly in the sky.

(Thank God!) Marco laughed, taking the words right out of my mouth—er, beak…head? Anyway…

(Hey Ellimist?) Rachel called out. (Ellimist? We need you! We're actually _beseeching _you!)

Another laugh filled my conciousness.

BESEECHING ME, THEN?

(Um, yeah,) Rachel said, but even she couldn't pretend that the booming voice didn't intimidate her.

WHAT IS IT THAT YOU REQUIRE?

(Marco?)

I watched as Marco fidgeted a little before saying. "Um yeah. We wanted you to create us a fake crisis."

PARDON?

"A fake crisis," Marco repeated. "So that we can go on a mission and get Cassie and Jake together."

YOU ARE ASKING ME TO CREATE AN EMERGENCY SO THAT YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS WILL HAVE TO SOLVE IT?

"Yeah." SO THAT YOU CAN MAKE YOUR FRIENDS—WHAT IS THE PHRASE—

(Pretty much,) I said casually, cutting him off. We all got the basic idea. VERY WELL THEN. I WILL. THIS SEEMS AS THOUGH IT SHOULD BE VERY ENTERTAINING. BUT REMEMBER THAT, BY THE RULES OF THE GAME, THERE ARE SOME CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH I CANNOT INTERPHERE.

"Got it." Marco was grinning widely; his plan was working, so far. There was a loud ringing sound and we knew that the Ellimist had gone, and Marco's grin got even bigger. "Oh _yeah!" _

We were in the barn again. I was perched in the rafters, and Rachel and Marco sat on the hay-strewn floor. "So what's the mission?"

I dropped it on the floor of the barn, and watched as it landed between the two of them. It was a faded old envelope, and the paper fell out of it as it floated downward. With my hawk's eyes, I could see every detail of the yellowing paper: the creases, the corner that had been torn, the coffee stain.

"What is it?" Marco demanded. The handwriting on the page was slanted, loopy and hard to read, and he stared at it in obvious frustration.

"It's a letter." Rachel was looking at it, transfixed, as if she knew that it would lead her down a very dark path. She gazed blankly at the handwriting that had been smeared by water at the two words that stood out clearly, as if they were leaping off the paper and into your ear: _time matrix. _


	5. Gone Forever

_RACHEL_

_Two Years Ago_

_Something was bothering me, though I had no idea what. It was night, and I was the owl—the war was over, but I still felt the blood boiling in my veins, as if I was going into battle. I felt the sense of loss that I had felt the first time I had ever killed an innocent Controller. Something was very, very wrong. _

_I soared in circles, making invisible patterns in the black sky. The night was starless and the moon was a sickly white sliver. Anyone else would have been blind in the darkness, but I could hear and see and smell like no human could ever dream to. Even from my position, high-flying in the sky, I could see something—someone—moving on the dampened ground. If I looked closely, I could see the outline of a human, a very familiar human. Oh, God—it was Jordan. _

_I plummeted down to the earth, every muscle in my body tensed as if I were about to fend off a Yeerk, or a monster. The adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream, and I was barely breathing with the owl's lungs. _

_I dropped to the soil of the small hill on which I had landed, demorphing rapidly. I shot upward, my talons were toes and hands…_

_I was me, Rachel. _

_I had no defenses whatsoever. _

_I walked to where my sister was kneeling. There could be no doubt it was her. Even with my human vision and my unadjusted eyes, I could see very clearly that it was her. She had not seen me. _

"_Jordan?" _

_My sister whipped around as I said her name. She had never looked like me, but I had been too absorbed in my war with the Yeerks to see how much she had changed. She looked a lot more like Dad than I ever would, her brown hair falling down to her shoulders and framing her face. She was like me in personality—she never, ever liked anyone to see her upset—but she could not hide the tears that filled her chocolate eyes to cascade down her cheeks. She looked at me, a little surprised, but said nothing. The silence was clear and blazing, unbroken. Finally: _

"_Rachel."_

_She had almost spat my name, not with hatred, but hollowed, as if it was some word that had no meaning, instead of her sister's name. She herself was hollow, I realized, as if she had lost that—that one thing that made her human. Her soul. Somebody had ripped out her soul. _

_And I leaned over and saw it. _

_There could be no mistake that this, this was why she was crying, why she was hollow. Her face had been bowed to gaze at it through her tears the entire time, and her breathing was unsure and shaky. _

_Her fingers were entwined in his hair. His eyes were open and clear, as if he was far off. They were a brownish green, an amazing blend of the two colors. His skin was olive, his eyelashes thick and long, and his hair—the hair, bloodied by the liquid that had made a path from his scalp, that Jordan had firmly in her grip—was a curly chestnut. He was quite a handsome boy, a few years Jordan's senior, but she looked at him as though he were the moon and the sky and the stars and heaven. _

"_Justin, oh God, Justin!" she moaned softly, and her tears flowed afresh. She brought his face up to place a kiss on his forehead and turned and looked at me with the eyes of an old woman. _

"_I'm going to kill myself, Rachel." _

_The words had fell from her mouth with so much certainty that I did not protest. I just gawked. This was my little sister, and she was talking about suicide? How could this happen, really? _

"_Jordan…Jordan, you can't! What about Mom and Dad and Sara and me? What about all your cousins and your uncles and your aunts, and your friends?" _

"_Justin," she said again. "Justin." _

_She shook her head. _

"_I've thought of that, Rach. You think I haven't thought of that, of everything? Half of them are dead, Rachel. Mom can see it. Mom knows. And Sara—" _

_Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Sara is dealing with her own pain, in her own way. Mom sees it. Mom knows. You've been away for a long time, Rachel." _

"_Jordan—" _

"_Thank you, Rachel. Thank you for everything that you've done for me, and for the human race. Thank you." _

"_Jordan!" I wrapped my sister in a hug, a rare occurrence, but called for. "I'm going to miss you so much, little sister. I'm going to miss you so much. I—I love you." _

"_Me too, sis," Jordan said, and her voice was hoarse. "Send my love to everybody." _

_I clasped her hand and realized that there were tears slipping down my cheeks, to meet my lips, salty and cold. I was shaking as I breathed. I squeezed her hand, but I couldn't bring myself to say a full sentence. _

"_When?" _

_The question had come from me before I could stop it. Jordan looked at me quizzically, as if I had just asked her a very irrelevant question and said,_

"_First light." _

_My eyes widened and I ceased to breathe. My God, dawn! About an hour left before my sister—so, so very young at sixteen—would end her own life on a hill littered with rotting corpses, a handful of miles away from society, too far away to call for help. Alone. _

"_I don't want you to watch," she told me, fighting to keep emotion from her voice. _

_My reply was anything but firm. "Okay."_

_The emotions swirling around in my head threatened to swallow me whole. I bowed my head and stared into the soil of the hill. I couldn't help it—I began to bawl like a baby. I wept and wept until my sides were splitting with the agony of it, till my eyes were red as a vampires, my entire body shaking, my hair soaked and stringy with the salty tears, and gasping for breath. Jordan said nothing, but put her hand on mine to tell me that she cared. _

"_Let us bury you." _

_I never imagined that I would say those words to my little sister. My mind was screaming. _You're just going to let her die? _something inside of me screamed. Yes, I was. As much as I hated the idea of it, if it had been Tobias's blood soaked body on that hill, I would have been in Jordan's position. So that was my only request. I was going to bury her with my own two hands if I had to. _

"_Bury me with him." _

_I breathed in and out and said nothing at all. But Jordan knew that this meant that I had agreed to her conditions. _

"_Go, Rachel." _

"_No."_

_My voice was cracking with pain; I was about to lose Jordan. I wasn't going to leave her alone for the final, most difficult hour of her life! _

_But Jordan freed her wrist from my grip and enfolded me in a hug. "Go, Rach," she whispered into my shoulder. "Just go. I love all of you. I'll be in a better place, right? I'll be—I'll be happier. I'll really be your sister then." _

_I blinked. _

_She shoved me away. "Go!" there was a flame in her eyes. My body moved without my instruction, heeding her request. I stood up and shut my eyes and the feather patterns seemed to appear of their own accord. I was utterly unaware as I changed, from me to the owl that had spotted my sister. She stood up too, and looked evenly at me, strong, determined, and like her heart was breaking. _

"_Bye." _

"_Bye, Jordan." _

_And I took off into the night sky. _

"Rachel? Rachel!" Marco's loud words snapped me out of my flashback. I shivered at the memory. Of all the battles I had fought, killing and almost being killed myself, that one, there, facing nothing but my own conscience and my little sister, was the hardest. Period.

It might seem cheesy or even laughable to you, melodramatic. You're probably thinking I exaggerated to make this story more interesting or something. But I didn't. I happened like that, just like that.

I shuddered again.

Sara had died four months later, drunk, drugged, and behind the wheel of a red SUV. She was fifteen.

(Who sent the letter?) Tobias asked Marco. I was grateful.

"Amelia E. Page."

"Who?"

"Some random old lady from 1936."

(1936?) Tobias mused. (How do we know that 'Amelia Page' isn't just an alibi?)

"We don't," Marco said grimly, twisting his face into a frown. "The question is—how're we gonna find out?"

r


	6. A Mission

My name is Jake Berensen

My name is Jake Berensen. And I live a sad, sad life.

I don't really do too much—I write mini-articles for charities and answer tons and tons of fanmail—that's my job. To keep people happy, just like I did during the war.

Well, I say—what the hell? I'm not happy, nor will I ever be happy, so why shouldn't someone else be? I'm cool with it.

My daily life: wake up, take a walk, eat a bowl of dry cereal, watch the news, answer fanmail, drive around, take a walk, eat a fistful of French fries in a sea of ketchup and a hamburger that has been frozen for a few centuries, drive around some more, talk to Rachel and Tom for a few hours, drink a _little _too much, watch crappy reruns on TV, get a cracker, go to bed.

Sleep, eat, repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

_What does Jake want in life?_ they all ask themselves in hushed tones. Well I'll just say this—they know it, and I know it, and…and she knows it too. There's a certain point in a lonely life when you stop lying to yourself and admit that you haven't gotten over whoever it was. So I'll admit it. The one thing I am missing is the one thing that is holding my still-pounding heart in the palm of its—_her­_—hand.

And she will always be somebody else's. I've met him, I've seen the way he holds himself and the way she looks at him and the thick, hideious ring that has his family crest on it. It's so big that it has to go on a chain around her neck, and so heavy that no one can ever see her face because her neck is pulled downward as if she's looking at the floor, and so ugly that his mother refused to wear it.

So there she is, sporting it like it was the—what's that thing called?—the really big diamond from India.

Anyway.

So I've accepted that. I've had plenty of times to come to terms with the hollowness of my existence, the lifelessness of my life.

I get the fact that I'm going to live a lonely life with Time Warner Cable. I get that.

But I don't like it.

I have a story to tell you, so I better get on it….

It was a Wednesday morning—or was it a Thursday, or a Friday, I can't remember—when I was standing like a little kid with my face pressed up against the icy glass of my back door, staring out onto the dewy grass and the wet fence. I watched the patterns my breath made on the ice. Slowly, slowly, slowly…

It was peaceful.

Suddenly, the phone gave a sharp ding. Despite my annoyance at whoever the caller was, I went to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Jake?" a familiar voice said.

"Rachel!"

"Um, hi, Jake," Rachel replied a little feebly. "We've got a mission."

I swallowed a lung. After taking a few seconds to commence breathing I practically screamed the one word:

"WHAT?" It wasn't an upset kind of yelling, just an excited kind. But Rachel never had Cassie's ability to read people. "Are you okay? Are you—are you cool with that?" she did not wait for my answer before she said: "we found a way to—maybe—get the Time Matrix."

The words reverberated in my head. Time Matrix, to bring my brother and my cousins back from the graveyard. Time Matrix, to make things turn out…different.

I said nothing. "Five am, tomorrow, the old woods, okay?"

I nodded, but of course she couldn't see me, so I managed, "My god, yes."

And I had hung up the phone and was racing into my bedroom. I hadn't asked her how long we were gonna be there. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I decided to cram anything I could fit into my suitcase and worry about the rest later. My suitcase was messy because I was in a hurry, but who cared? I paused for a minute to consider something.

I didn't want any embarrassing moments, especially not with Cassie around. Then again…I wanted my brother back more.

I whooped loudly, punched the air, and got on the computer.

The plane landed around 2 in the morning, on the cold, lonely runway.

It was a commercial flight, and people were running down the ramp into the arms of their loved ones. I stood in the doorway, waiting.

Once most all of them had deserted the place, I could see her.

She was prettier than I remembered: a slimmer waist, longer hair, bigger, deeper eyes. Her hands, I could see, even from this distance, were dainty and skilled and long-fingered. She was shapely and lovely, and I caught a few men stealing glances at her.

But when my cousin spoke my name, it was hoarsely, as if she were an old man that had seen too much of the world:

"Jake."

Rachel had a red pickup truck that had creaky doors and squealing breaks. I climbed up to ride shotgun, and she sat wordlessly behind the wheel, fighting the rain and the darkness. I could see her in the light now: there were purple rings under her eyes and she was startlingly pale; and she smelled of cigarette smoke, though I doubted that she was actually the smoker.

We made awkward small talk for a while; and then she spared us both by cranking up the radio.

It was very un-Rachel-like music.

A thought flashed through my mind.

But no, that couldn't be right.

Apparently in my months of seclusion, I had forgotten how to not let my thoughts show on my face. Rachel smiled at me rather sadly as if she had guessed my thoughts, and her teeth were brilliantly white. Then she looked forward, back to driving, as if nothing had happened.

The road stretched on and on, darkened by nighttime and pounded by rain.


	7. An Unexpected Phone Call

I love Ronnie

I love Ronnie. I really do. But the man snores. As in _snores. _As in, I have nightmares about Rachel starting an elephant stampede and wake up and it's Ronnie snoring.

Yeah. Like that.

On this particular morning, I woke up at eight-fifteen in the morning to the sound of—guess what?—snoring. I stayed there for a few minutes, lying on my back and making pictures on the ceiling, before deciding that, seeing as I would never be able to go back to sleep, I was going to get up.

Ronnie and I live in a condo on the beach. It's a beautiful little place, modest enough, but big enough (as Ronnie has often pointed out) to start a family in. We live very comfortably.

Another thing about Ronnie? He hates, hates, _hates _doing dishes. So I get stuck with doing them. It's not like I mind, really. I just start humming to myself and then I'm suddenly done.

Apparently, Ronnie had consumed a slice of cold pizza (his favorite) at about eleven o'clock at night the night before. So, of course, there were dishes in the sink.

I did them, smiling.

It was a beautiful day. How could I _not _be smiling? The curtains were flung open to let the sunlight pour over the window seat where I read. The cool light of the morning lit up the kitchen, made its every surface glittery and clean-looking.

I poured myself a mug of creamer with a dash of coffee and sat on our leather sofa, thinking about my life. I loved it. I worked with the Hork-Bajirs and with Ronnie, live in a comfy little condo with a killer view, I have a boyfriend that loves me and treats me right, and great friends.

I was happy. But there was something missing, deep, deep down. Or maybe I had just imagined the feeling.

Ronnie woke up around eleven and made us both chocolate-chip pancakes (three four me and seven four himself; nine for leftovers).

I sipped my cranberry juice and he read his _Time. _We were holding hands across the table. The peace was split in two, however, when the phone buzzed. I made a jump for it—the ringtone told me it was Rachel—but Ronnie got their first.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Cassie?" I heard Rachel say.

"No, this is Ronnie."

"Oh. Ronnie, I need to talk to Cassie," Rachel said, and I could hear her trying to restrain her impatience.

"She's eating breakfast. Leave her alone."

"Give me Cassie or I will effing stomp your face in with my elephant feet, you bastard."

Ronnie said something that was even ruder than Rachel's comment.

I feel the need to tell you something that you have probably already inferred: Rachel and Ronnie have never gotten on well.

I threw my hands up in the air.

"Just give me the phone, both of you, and stop being venomous," I said loudly enough for them both to hear.

I could hear Rachel throaty growl.

I took the phone from a very unhappy Ronnie.

"Can you get someplace where we can talk without _him _overhearing?" Rachel demanded as soon as I was on the line. "Rachel, you're so rude to him."

She gave no response.

"Oh, fine then," I cried, exasperated and more than a little irritated at the both of them and their unending impassiveness. I went into the guest room and shut the door heavily behind me.

"What is it?"

"We found the Time Matrix."

"So?" I demanded meanly.

"_So," _ Rachel explained to me with more patience than she had ever had with Ronnie, "we can change time if we've got it! Cassie, hello? Do you know what that means? Do you know what we could do?"

"I'm not interested," I told her flatly.

"Cassie…" her voice was almost pleading.

"Why the hell do you need me? Why do you even need the Matrix. Everything turned out okay for us."

I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.

"No, Cassie," Rachel told me, her voice turning stormy, "everything turned out okay for _you._ You have a happy home and a happy life and a happy lover. But what about me? With a mother whose taking depression pills and a father who's always drinking to bore it all out? What about Tobias, a hawk with the mind of a man that can change shape for only two hours at a time? How am I supposed to have a decent relationship with him if he can't even turn human for more than two hours? What about Jake? Do you see how sad he is? Do you even give a damn?"

Rachel paused to breathe. She had hit her mark: I felt like a scumbag. She continued.

"My sisters are dead. Jake's brother is dead. Maybe Sara and Jordan and Tom don't mean anything to you, but they're my family. I want them back. We don't know what we're up against. We're taking a wild gamble here. What if Tobias and Jake and Marco and me can't do it on our own? What if we need you, and you're sitting in your living room watching _I Love Lucy _reruns?"

Her voice was like fire, like a hurricane. It had risen in volume as she had spoken. But now all of the rage and energy left her and there was only sadness, despair, even.

"I miss them, Cassie."

Silence.

"Where do I sign up?"

Rachel did not brighten.

"The old woods. Tomorrow at 5 in the morning." I was too eager for her forgiveness to gawk at the early hour.

"I'll be there," I promised before hanging up the phone and going out to tell Ronnie.

Ronnie wasn't too excited about my going to help with the Animorph mission. I hadn't given him all the fine details in case it might endanger him somehow (old habits die hard) but he had heard enough after three and a half seconds.  
"Lemme get this straight. You are being _summoned—" _

"Not summoned, asked to come—"

"To the woods where you and your friends met up and plotted against the Yeerks?"

"Pretty much."

Ronnie looked a degree passed pissed.

"Ronnie, please…they need me. I need to go help them."  
"Why?"

"So we can save Rachel's sisters. For Jake's brother."

If he had looked unhappy at the prospect of my leaving him to aid Rachel, the look that crossed his face when I mentioned Jake was hellish.

"Jake needs you, then?" he asked darkly.

"Yes, Ronnie, he does!"

Jake was a threat. Jake was always a threat. Jake, who I had loved so many lifetimes ago, was always Ronnie's chief rival. Jake had everything a woman could possibly want, so I could see Ronnie's point of view. But it annoyed me anyway.

"Now don't get defensive! I love you, you know that! What do you think this is, a plot to get me to fall in love with him?"

Ronnie and I packed his dirty green Honda with two large suitcases with enough clothes for two weeks. Ronnie was coming with me, he had informed me at the last minute. I had sighed and agreed wearily.

"Is that everything?" he called out, grunting with the effort of shoving one last briefcase into the too-small trunk. "Think so," I replied, not really paying attention as I climbed into the shotgun.

The drive there was painfully awkward. Ronnie made bizarre small talk, which I responded two with equally random and pointless comments. Usually it wouldn't have been this way. But the three and a half hours it took to get to my old home were different. This involved _Jake. _

This was an assault to Ronnie's manhood.

"Where're we gonna stay?" Ronnie asked me conversationally as we turned down one of many twisting, empty country roads under the warm California sun.

"I thought at my parents'," I told him, "because its so close to where we need to be."  
He gave a masculine grunt and said nothing.

The drive was agonizingly quiet the rest of the way. A flicker of doubt flashed in front of my mind. Why was it that, the moment one my oldest friends was mentioned, my relationship with my lover crumbled, and so quickly and needlessly? How could I live a life with a person that barely trusted me with a person that was admittedly dear to me, that had been my sweetheart years before? There was nothing going on between Jake and me.

Maybe I did doubt my relationship with Ronnie after all.

We pulled into Mom and Dad's driveway as the clock on the dashboard turned from 4:13 to 4:15. Ronnie turned to me and looked deep into my eyes. Obviously he had followed my train of thought.

"It's just a bad day, Cass," he told me sincerely. "We're in a very temporary rut. We'll be fine. We love each other, don't we?"


	8. The Value of Life

A/N: Hey, sorry it took me so long to update. Again: read and review!! Thanks. Sorry for the typos, or the first sentence repeated at the beginning.

I felt a hand slap the back of my head. I turned around slowly, unwilling to wake up, to see Rachel, posed like a she-wolf preparing to strike at her prey.

"Hey! What was that for, may I ask?"

"Wake _up!"_

"It's five in the flippin' morning!"

Rachel rolled her eyes. (Actually,) corrected Tobias's voice in my head, (it's 4:43. We got here early for the benefit of Jake and Cassie, remember?)

"Not helping," I mumbled grumpily, looking towards where he perched easily on a branch. "It's still way too early. My internal clock is way off. It's crying. I neeeed to go to sleep!"

I paused so that my companions could grasp the deep, movingness of my deep, moving speech. When neither of the two began to cry at the beauty of my words or offer me a pillow, I looked from one to the other.

"Are you _used _to getting up at this hour?" I demanded of them both. (Early bird gets the worm,) Tobias reminded me. Rachel just shrugged. "Since when do you eat worms?" I retorted lamely.

"It was your idea in the first place," Rachel smirked at me evilly. "Meeting at five in the morning 

was _not _my idea!"

(Shhhh,) Tobias hushed me hastily. (Jake's here.)

We stood utterly still for too long. I began to have movement withdrawals. I was extremely grateful when Jake appeared. Suddenly, we were launched into activities. "Jake, buddy!" I strode over to him in three long steps and gave him the guy hug.

You know, the guy hug. The half-hug that us guys give. Rachel laughed into her hand at my masculine gesture.

Jake nodded to acknowledge the three of us, and then looked around as if something were missing. Then, the words I should have foreseen: "Where is Cassie?"

Cassie was about ten minutes late to Jake's fifteen minutes early. All of us were thinking the same thing: she actually has a real life to live that keeps her from coming here. It was something the rest of us all lacked. Maybe I had a sort-of life. But fame and fortune aren't everything. You never thought you'd hear me say those words, did you? Well, they're true. And Rachel? What can you expect? Two dead sisters, a pair of depressed parents, and a lover that happens not to be human. Tobias is a _hawk. _He loves Rachel, he really does. But again: how can you live a life as a bird with the heart of a human? Jake was empty, just plain empty. All of us were, in our own ways. But Cassie was happy, and she thought she was whole. Of course, the rest of us knew that Jake was the last piece of the puzzle; but she didn't, and ignorance is bliss. Cassie, for all her ability to read people, all her understanding, was unable to know the true value of a life like we did.

It made me angry that she was so happy. That she was so careless and fancy-free. It made me mad. But it got me focused. We had a mission to complete.

I kept my eyes on Jake as Cassie bid Ronnie a near-tearful goodbye. From our position a ways off, we could see their passionate embraces and their hastily exchanged kisses. He clung to her like a needy puppy until the very last second when she pulled away. He stood, watching her retreating back, as she approached us. Then he called out to her. She turned slowly, still smiling at him. We couldn't hear the exchanging of words, but she went back to him and bowed her head so that he could put something around her neck—a chain, I saw, bearing his family crest. Jake shot me a woeful look; his stare was full of venom. I was glad that the poison wasn't aimed at me.

I had never seen the pendant up-close, but as she walked toward the four of us in a cluster I could see why Jake hated it so much. Well, of course he hated it because it was Ronnie's way of marking his territory. (Although if Cassie had had an insight into the male psyche and realized that that was why he wanted her to wear it, there was no doubt in my mind she would have dumped him on the spot. I could hear her now—"I am _nobody's _territory!" The thought made me smile.)

But there was another reason to hate it. It was vilely ugly. Hideous, even.

I made a gagging face.

Rachel laughed silently. Finally, she laughs at my jokes.

"Hello, Jake," said Cassie softly.


	9. Jackolyn

"Okay. So this lady from 1936 had the Time Matrix?"

It was Cassie, sitting on a thick log around a crackling fire.

When I was in the third grade, my mom got so desperate to make me less aggressive that she actually enrolled me in Girl Scouts for five months or so, until I got in a fight when one of the crazy bitches threatened Jordan. I knocked her tooth out. That's when I un-enrolled. And that's what this felt like, Girl Scouts all around a fire on logs. Only Girl Scouts didn't have coffee. Or guys in torn jeans and leather.

Anyhow.

Cassie was sitting on a log. There were two of them sitting around the fire, actually.

Cassie and Jake sat together, about an arm's length apart, and closer together than they would have been if Ronnie was here. "Yeah," was Marco's eloquent reply.

"What the hell?" Cassie mused. I laughed.

"What?" Cassie demanded, her hands on her hips. "Since when do you say, 'what the hell,' Cassie?"

"Oh, just shut up."  
I snickered.

"So, what's our first move, fearless leader?" I asked. Jake sat wordlessly for a moment or two, chewing his lip and pondering. Finally:

"Tobias, did the letter come with an envelope?"

(Yes, I think so.)

"Where is it?"

"I've got it," I called out, and began to fish through her designer handbag. "Is that made from _real _baby crocodile?" Cassie demanded scoldingly. I rolled my eyes. Marco laughed.

"Here it is," I proclaimed triumphantly.

There it was, indeed. We could see Page's scrawled handwriting on the yellowed evelope. I had a sudden flash of her, a withering old woman, hunched over a dusty desk, penning the letter.

"The interrogation begins," Marco muttered just loud enough for us to hear.

"Where did you find it, Tobias?"

(In an abandoned boarding house on the outskirts of town.)

"Details?"

(1407 Del Cailamiere Drive. Room 19, on the third floor.)

He paused, remembering.

(And the letter was in a yellowing envelope, addressed to "My Dear."

My heart thudded in my chest. _God, Tobias. Don't say those words._

"Read it to us," Jake said. His voice was flat, and as chilled as grey stone.

Tobias began.

(_My Dear—_

_You were right! We've got The Matrix. Just think what we could do: The Time Matrix. Anything is possible. We can change history, stop wars, reunite lovers…._we _can be lovers now._

_Now read this closely: at 12 midnight, Cecile will come to the ugly barred eye with the pretty golden teeth. She'll let you cross the ocean, and then come to me where the monkeys used to play, Tarzan and Jane, the emerald green field with the sunshine-yellow lilies. Meet me in the hollow of the oak tree. Bring the red sapphire, and I will bring the purple diamond. _

_All my love and adoration,_

_Amelia.)  
_  
Tobias stopped reading abruptly. Everyone had reacted differently to the letter he had just read. Marco whistled softly. Tobias' razor-sharp stare was locked with my firm blue one; Jake and Cassie had scooted closer together on the log. Jake's fingers were curled in a half-fist on the flaking wood, and his knuckles were white. Cassie was squirming. They were thinking of each other. Any idiot could tell that much.  
(Good work, men,) Tobias called to Marco and me in our heads. Against his will, I saw Marco smile.

"So where do we go from here?" Cassie asked after a while, breaking the painful silence. "Jake?"  
Her voice softened as she said his name. _Score.  
_"I don't--" my cousin pondered his options, but I was already a step ahead. I had whipped out my Blackberry and proceeded to go to Google.  
"Rachel," Marco said, sounding convincingly irritated, "this is no time to check the 'Celeb Gossip Blog.'"  
"Whatever, gorillaman," I replied nonchalantly, and he pouted, whining. Classic Marco.  
"Amelia E. Page." I said the name as I typed it in the searched bar. A page of links popped up. "Not very promising," I commented. "I want to see." Cassie had leaned in toward me.

It was a Facebook page. The picture of its preppy brunette owner smiled up at us from the shining screen.  
"My name is Jackolyn," I read in my preppy-cheerleader voice. "I'm twenty-four years old, and the head cheerleader at St. Juni's Private School for Extinguished--"  
"She means rich," Marco muttered.  
"--Young Women. I've lived in Cali my whole life, and I just love it here. Right now I'm doing a project for Speech class, about mine and other people's heroes. I don't know about you, but my number-one hero is my grandmother, Amelia Etheline Page. She was a novelist, but none of her books were ever published on account of her never finishing the manuscripts. She really didn't like my grandfather very much--his name was Alfred Peter St. Lennon--which I can understand, because he was a total bastard. Supposedly, he drank a lot and even beated her..."  
"_Beated _her?" Jake cut in.  
"That's what it says," I replied innocently. "Anyway, if you please. Back to reading. ...so she divorced his sorry ass and fell in love with a madman who was hospitalized and died in custody after a one-night prison stay for vandalism. Well, that was my grandma. If you've got any heroes you want me to include in my speech, just call me on my cell. And there's a number listed below that."

"Damn, now I feel better about myself," Marco pronounced. "What a ditz."  
"Seriously."  
"But helpful," Cassie added, almost defensively. "That's our Cassie, always the defendant," Jake said proudly, his voice just above a whisper. "Nice to have you back."

"So now we've got a lead," Marco mused. "Should we call her?"  
(Of course.)  
"I want to talk!" Marco cried. "Besides, she's kinda hot."  
We all rolled our eyes.

"Hello?" Marco held the receiver to his mouth. "Is this Jackolyn Page-St. Lennon Anderson?"  
"What a damn mouthful," I said, not jealous of this girl at all.  
"I know, right?" For the first time that night, my best friend smiled.  
"Hello, Jackie?" I giggled behind my hand. Marco had warped his voice to sound like a chick. I thought he sounded like a nine-year-old hooker.  
"Hi, sweetie. I was just wondering if I could get more info on your family tree. I saw your Facebook, and I'm doing a project--I have to pick a stranger and analyze a member of their family that has died--for a class too, I was wondering if we could swap info. I'd like to know more about Ms. Page. I'll tell you about my hereos."  
"What are their names?" we heard Jackie say.  
"Clark Parker, Peter Wayne, and Bruce Kent," Marco announced, and I stifled a laugh. Marco shot a glare in my direction and continued. "Clark was an engineer that overdosed on sleeping pills after his fifth divorce, went into a coma, and woke up paralyzed. He wrote a book pointing to letters on a chart when he realized he could only move his left pinky finger. It's 457 pages long and made the _New York Times _Bestseller List. Peter was a teenage runaway that got a sex change at nineteen and became a CEO-slash-supermodel. She died in obscurity in 1988, after gambling away all her money. Bruce, last but not least, ran for mayor at 22, was cheated out of the victory by a 34-year-old hacker that manipulated the system. The hacker now works for an anonymous Senator, and was protected from lawsuits by his employer. Mr. Kent was shot and killed by his wife, but left a beatiful note to his son and daughter, which they found in a champagne bottle among the ruckus of Kent's second-story bedroom."  
"I'll send you the info on Grandma immediately," Jackie breathed. "That story is so sad!" "Yes, I know," Marco said, sounding on the verge of tears. Then he pretended to stifle a sob. "You know what the saddest part is, Jackolyn, though?" He paused for emphasis. "Bruce Wayne--I mean Bruce Kent--was my father."  
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Jackie said, fooled. "I'll send you a batch of cookies, too."

"Score!" Marco hooted when the phone was hung up safely.  
(I have to admit, Marco, that was good,) Tobias praised. (You fooled that girl. Or is that just because she wasn't all that smart?)  
Marco swatted in Tobias' direction. "Oh, stop it. You know you love me."  
Tobias laughed, a beautiful sound that floated through the air.

"Do we _have _to do this, Rachel? Please don't make me do this!" Cassie was literally on her knees with her hands clasped like a fervant worshipper before an altar. Her voice was begging. "I'm not cut out for this kind of crap."  
"Makeovers are not _crap, _Cassie. They are a new opportunity to freshen your look. Besides, you're beautiful anyway--you just need to bring it out, so that it shines."  
"I _do _shine," Cassie protested.  
"Hmm? What d'you say?"  
"Ronnie thinks I shine," she said. I tossed my head defiantly.  
"Jake thinks I shine," she said softly.  
I smiled, flashing all thirty-two of my perfectly white teeth.  
"Yeah, sis, he does."

By the way, I won that battle. "Rachel, do I _have _to wear this outfit?" she demanded, using my favorite word. I rolled my eyes. "_Yes, _Cassie, you do!" I exhaled loudly, dragging her by the wrist out of the tent. (Operation in motion,) Tobias's words resounded in my head. (Super Agent M--) I looked to the sky with an eyebrow cocked. (It's not my fault,) he snapped. (That's what he said. Anyway, he's got Jake and he's walking.)

I nodded, and Cassie stared at me oddly. "Something wrong?" I asked her, flashing my sugar-sweet I'm-lying smile. She frowned. And then we stepped out of the shadow of the tent and into daylight. Jake and Marco were walking, indeed, chatting and laughing a little. (He's grinning. Good work,) Tobias commented, stealing the words from me. But then Jake stopped laughing. He stopped walking, and moving altogether. His brown eyes were turned toward--and fixed on--Cassie's face. I had highlighted her bone structure with my brushes, brought out her lips with my wands and my tubes and my mirrors. I had painted her nails and fitted a dress over her curves, I had combed her hair till it shone. Jake was staring.  
Despite herself, Cassie let a smile slide huge across her face even as it turned pink with took two steps toward her. "You look...wonderful," he said decidedly, and her "thank you" was lost in her shyness. I swatted her fingers, and her eyes darted in my direction, enraged. I threw my hands in the air.  
"Cassie, you look great, and to celebrate, we are _all _going out dancing. We made progress last night--a lot of progress," I said, speaking to both present parties, "and we are going to celebrate. "Rache--" Jake protested. Marco's loud voice masked Cassie's accompanying disagreements. "That is a fantastic idea, Rachel. I agree entirely."  
Jake and Cassie looked at one another, speaking in their secret language. _If Marco and Rachel are agreeing on something, it must be something they really, really want. _Cassie nodded, smiling shyly again. "Quit being coy," Jake said to her, before bursting into laughter.

We had fun that night, all of us together, friends and not soldiers. It was a good feeling.  
Tobias and I danced every song that came on, and Marco sat at the bar drinking (and flirting, of course) after he had managed to coax Cassie and Jake to the center of the dance floor.  
Cassie told me later she would never forget it, everything about it: Jake swinging her around to Wild Cherry, the pounding of her heart and Ronnie a feeble memory in that had been shoved to the back of her mind's eye, momentarily forgotten. Marco and Tobias and I kept exchanging grins. We thought we had succeeded in achieving our goal--we thought we had it all together, under control. What we didn't know was that everything was about to spin out wildly out of anyone's grasp; no one could control it, no one could stop it, and it would change Cassie, my best friend, until the day she died.

When we got back to the campsite that night, we were drunk from our own and Cassie and Marco had linked arms and were singing "Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall" and I circled the sky with Tobias, gently chiding our friends for their foolishness, yet no less ridiculous ourselves.  
"Well, I'm off to bed," Marco declared (winking) when the trio had made it to "negative seven bottles of beer on the wall" and Tobias and Jake followed him to the "Male" section of our site. Cassie and I began to laugh, high-fiving each other on the way. Cassie paused at the port-a-potties, blushing red, and said she'd meet me at the tents. I was on my way to my warm, soft sleeping bag when I heard a scream, and frantic shuffling. I could hear Cassie swearing and yanking something from her bag, and screaming again.  
"Cassie?" I demanded, pounding on the door after running back to where she sat. "What's wrong?"  
Cassie scrambled out of the tiny unit, straightening her jeans on her hips, and managed to choke out "cell phone...Ronnie--Oh, God..." I met her demands hastily, a sinking feeling of dread in my heart.  
She dialed Ronnie's number so quickly that her fingers were nothing but a blur. "He--" I heard him say, and felt a stab of dislike toward him, but Cassie cut him off.  
"Ronnie," she said, breathing heavily into the reciever and sounding distraught. "I'm pregnant."


End file.
